Janet Daley was born in America where she began her political life on the Left as an undergraduate at Berkeley. She moved to Britain (and to the Right) in 1965 where she spent nearly twenty years in academic life before becoming a political commentator: all factors that inform her writing on British and American policy and politicians.

Francis Maude is scheduled to give a speech tonight to Policy Exchange in which he will contend that if the Conservatives fail to advocate gay marriage, they will be unelectable. I happen to think that this is factually wrong – simply because for most voters, the issue of gay marriage will not be the deciding factor at the next general election. But even if we don't take Mr Maude's view absolutely literally: if we assume that he means that without embracing a more socially liberal attitude toward homosexuality, the party will be locked into an ultimately untenable position, there is still a problem.

One of the major tenets of the Tory modernisers' campaign has been that the party's social attitudes are archaic and that an unfashionable intolerance of alternative lifstyles is a totemic example of this. Which may be true, especially among urban intellectuals. But another fundamental proposition of the modernisers has been that the party must appeal more to ethnic minorities. For the Conservatives to remain a bastion of white, middle-class, suburban values (or prejudices, depending on your point of view) would put it out of step with the future of the country. So which is it?

Because, you see, a choice will have to be made. There are few groups in Britain today who are more inclined to outright homophobia than devout Muslims, and the strong contingent of African Christians in the UK, who are now making their voices heard in the Anglican Church, are utterly opposed to gay marriage. I would really like to hear from the modernising forces themselves, how they plan to reconcile this. Is the party to address the demands of the gay lobby – thereby making itself more acceptable to middle-class liberals – or will it be sensitive to the concerns of those ethnic minorities which have religious objections to those demands?

PS: If it's any consolation, it isn't just Tories who have this difficulty. Ken Livingstone finds himself caught in precisely the same dilemma.